1. A Christmas Carol

2. “I have endeavored in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me.”
— Charles Dickens, preface to A Christmas Carol

3. Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol as a "potboiler," or an inferior work done purely for quick profit. Unfortunately, while the book was an instant success and remains one of his best- known works, Dickens made little profit because people purchased pirated editions. There were no copyright laws at that time in England.

4. When Charles Dickens first published A Christmas Carol in December 1843, it won instant popularity with the reading public. Critics note that in the novel Dickens virtually invented the holiday season as many celebrate it today.

5. The novel presents Christmas as a time for charity, caroling, good will, and celebration within families. The story’s immediate popularity demonstrates that this vision had tremendous appeal for people early during the Victorian Era.

6. A Christmas Carol, regardless of the title, is not a religious text as much as a humanistic one. Church bells do ring, but Dickens emphasizes not religion as much as humanitarianism. As in many of his other works, we see concern with ethics, the right (and wrong) way to live, as well as an awareness of the plight of the poor.

7. Dickens titled his novel A Christmas Carol rather than A Christmas Story. Although the work is clearly not a song, he carried through the metaphor by using divisions he called staves instead of “chapters.” In music and poetry, a stave can be a musical score or a stanza.
The novel also capitalizes on Victorian interest in ghost stories and the custom of telling them during the Christmas season.

8. The End